At last a book by Jesse Sleeman, one of our masters of traditional
herbal medicine, a philosopher, a teacher and a scientist in the truest
senses of the words; a man who questions everything. Specialising in
social psychology at university before becoming a herbalist, his studies
gained him a Master of Arts in Psychology. The knowledge and skills
Jesse acquired then would later underpin his approach to health matters
and are clearly evident in the composition and presentation of this
thoroughly researched and referenced volume.

The book is divided into three parts which lead us through a
passionate and brilliant argument in support of life on earth. He shows
us how and where we lost the traditional philosophies of healing and
health and why we need to resume them. He demonstrates how our lives and
individual health have become an industrial commodity. We have become
the animals experimented on. With the statistics to back his ideas he
gives us his references in a 100 page list of published academic
research papers.

In part one, Sick society, Ailing medicine, Jesse presents a
history of the use of pharmacy in modern medicine through the 20th
century and shows us some of the results. The chapters are: Death by
doctoring, Tools of medicine, Why modern medicine may be harming you,
Drug hype, To vaccinate or not to vaccinate. The subsections of each
chapter are clearly defined in the table of contents where we are
offered comprehensive help to find the information with such listings
as: The band aid solution, Making sense of drugs, Drug interactions,
Clinical tests, A brief history of illness, Are we really living longer,
The hype, The charade, the Subterfuge and the propaganda, The importance
of infections, and Hidden footnotes to the vaccination saga. One
thousand published studies are listed as references for this part of the
book.

In part two, Blinkered Science and the Vital Force, the chapters
are How do we know, Two ways to view health and disease, Vital force:
Stuck in the whole, Spinning energies, Signs of intelligence; Health and
disease revisited. Jesse's references list here is wide and
includes Aristotle, Plato, Blavatsky, Capra, Descartes, Suzuki, Bacon,
Einstein, Oppenheimer, Jung, Hippocrates, Eddington and Campbell along
with many scientists acknowledged in the quantum world such as Bohm,
Davies and Mindell.

Part three, The human continuum and beyond, contains chapters
titled The human continuum, Beyond the continuum, Drowning in a sea of
electropollution, and The rape of life. It offers such sub-sections as
The health of hunters and gatherers, The chemical deluge, A cautionary
tale, Vanishing varieties, and Nuking foods and nanotech nonsense. Jesse
tells us about the current state of aboriginal health, electromagnetic
radiation, satellite and mobile phone risks, the politics behind genetic
engineering of food crops and what it really means for us.

In the final subsection, Who speaks for life, we read
'Individually we can change our lives for the better ...
collectively we can heal the world'. Volume 2, coming soon, is
about how we do it.

Thank you Jesse Sleeman. This book is an important work for anyone
involved in health, ecology, sociology, environmental and biological
sciences. In fact for anyone concerned about our survival. What an
interesting, intelligent, generous and educated tome you have presented
us with. A book we've needed for a very long time to help us move
towards repairing and restoring the awful state of life on earth.